Competitors chime in on “boring” GT5

Woohoo! There’s nothing like a bit of smack-talk to get your day going! Gran Turismo 5 hit shelves yesterday after years of waiting and anticipation. The game has been hyped and advertised to hell and back, which of course leaves competitors in the unenviable position of having to steal some attention back again.

Electronic Arts and Codemasters have both recently made racing games. Their games came out before GT5 did. Now that GT5 is out, people are looking at Polyphony’s new baby and not EA’s or Codemaster’s. Clearly, that makes EA and Codemasters jealous, and jealousy makes you nasty!

Patrick Soderlund is a Senior VP for Electronic Arts and it’s his job to promote and love the hell out of everything that EA makes. He thinks that Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit and Gran Turismo 5 don’t exactly share an audience, although there will be audience overlap to a certain extent. He does, however, see Need For Speed Shift 2 as a direct competitor to GT5. What’s going to set them apart? Well, according to Soderlund, Gran Turismo 5 is “sterile”. Speaking to CVG, the Senior VP said:

“Would I want to compete with Gran Turismo on sheer scale – meaning number of cars and the depth that they have in the game? Probably not. What does make sense to me… I think they have a very sterile, almost car collecting type of product where that’s mainly what we do and I think we can offer something different. Our idea is that if we can offer the most authentic driving experience and portray what it feels like being inside a race car, then I think that’s where we can excel and where we absolutely will beat them. That I know for sure.”

And Codemasters? Well, CEO Rod Cousens had this to say about GT5:

“you can have a technically phenomenal game, but you can also have a game concept that doesn’t really appeal and could be accused of – and you have to be careful how you write this – of being boring.”

Of course, when compared to Codemasters’ recently released F1 2010, Cousens said: “We don’t have that problem.”

Wow, the claws are out. I think that Kaz Yamauchi, Rod Cousens and Patrick Soderlund should all challenge each other to a racing grudge-match. They could do three races, one in each of their games. The winner takes all; losers have to get personalised number plates for their real life cars that read: “Kaz’s B1tch” or “Rod’s B1tch” or whichever is applicable.

Source: Kotaku and CVG

Last Updated: November 25, 2010